On the news of state-owned channel Rai Uno the presenter announced that the Italian Prime Minister had been “absolved” in the trial that found David Mills – husband of former British cabinet minister Tessa Jowell – accused of taking a bribe from the Italian politician.

The contention grew out of the fact that Berlusconi had not been absolved, the trial had been statute barred. This was the outcome of an intense campaign to reform the justice system in Italy, which succeeded in indicting the bribed but not the briber.

The last step was to make sure that public opinion was steered in the right direction.

At that very moment Augusto Minzolini – editor of Rai Uno’s main news program – became Arianna’s target, as he was personifying what was wrong with Italian journalism and information at the time.

This is how the Facebook group “Dignity for Journalists and Respect for citizens was born. Now this very group has gathered around 15,000 signatures calling for the rectification of the news story regarding Berlusconi’s trial.

Today, July 1st, the netizens of Italy and allies of Valigia Blu – will be taking to the streets – virtual and real – to protest against a new law, known as Alfano Law or “gag law”, an anti-phone tapping bill already “greenlighted”on June 12 by the Italian Senate. The penalties for those who violate this law are severe: fines of up to € 450.000 for editors or even detention for up to one month for journalists.

It was put into place to prohibit the leaking of phone and wire-tapped conversations on criminal probes to mainstream media, as well as online media. The bill is now due to receive final approval from the lower house of parliament or Chamber of Deputies. The steering continues.

Many wiretapped conversations have led to a widespread disillusionment with the Prime Minister – known as Il Cavaliere, the Knight, due to his government-endowed title – and his apparatchiks.

The main protest – called on by the National Press Federation – will take place in Piazza Navona in Rome, but it will also flow through the channels of online activism. It will be live streamed on websites such as YouDem.tv, supported by the Democratic Party, i.e. the main opposition body. Other websites, such as Diritto di Critica, are closely following and supporting the protest.

A protest against Berlusconi in Piazza del Popolo, Rome.

Arianna doesn’t have a political background. She was previously an organiser involved with the renowned International Festival of Journalism in Perugia, and is now a key figure in this movement. Arianna took the time to explain to OWNI the reasons behind her movement’s momentum.

All citizens should revolt against a law that shackles magistrates and gags information

“All citizens should revolt against a law that shackles magistrates and gags information”, Arianna elucidates, underlining the lack of political interest attached to this type of activism. “I have been mobilised by the right to know and to freedom of press [...] In a country stained by the prime minister’s gross conflict of interest we act as watchdogs, not just for information but also public services which at this moment are in the hands of the various political parties”, she adds.

“I don’t see Valigia Blu as an organised movement. Or even as a movement in itself. It grew within social networks like Facebook. Our “Dignity and respect” group has more than 200.000 members, the fan page has 16000 fans, whereas the website in itself has no more than 2000 subscribers. We are merely committed citizens.”

Wiretapping opponents mostly argue that these leaks deprive individuals of their right to privacy: “When it comes to public figures, everything about them should be known. If there is a need to protect those who, though involved in tapped conversations, are innocent, one can resort to hearing excerpts. The civil defence and the public prosecutor can decide, along with an independent third-party judge, what material should not be published. Privacy is more often than not used as an excuse. This bill is set to protect the ruling class and the shady practices of white collar workers. Not to mention depriving magistrates of one of the main tools of investigation against organised crime”.

In the meantime a parallel current has emerged within Valigia Blu. If the bill passes their pledge is to violate it. “Arrestateci tutti“, they say.

Put us all in prison

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The interview was conducted by Adriano Farano

Pictures Credit: CC FlickR lo spacciatore di lenti

Burt Herman (picture by Tony Deifell)

How did you come up with the idea of Hacks and Hackers?

The idea came to me after spending a year as a Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. Journalism is in a state of upheaval, and we now have an amazing opportunity to reshape how news is gathered and consumed. Everyone can be a reporter when news happens, sending Tweets, and uploading photos and video from smartphones. But journalists are still needed to help make sense of it all, and technology can help them cope with this massive wave of information. Also, computer scientists are learning so much about how people interact with technology, and we should be applying those lessons to journalism.

Why this name?

The name began with “hackers” — I knew I wanted to use that because a true hacker is someone who uses whatever it takes to get the job done. In Silicon Valley, it’s a positive word for a skilled computer developer. I tried to think of a journalism word that would go together with that, and decided on “hack” — which is slang for a journalist in a tongue-in-cheek way. The name Hacks/Hackers embodies the grassroots spirit of the organization.

How did you start?

I created a group on meetup.com and had the first meeting in November at a bar in San Francisco. From there, it grew quickly and we now have more than 600 members spread across the world. We’ve held Hacks/Hackers-related meetings also in Chicago and Washington DC, and the first New York event is set for June 2.

What do you do concretely to pursue your goal to connect geeks and journos?

We’ve held monthly get-togethers that have drawn dozens of people from top technology companies like Google, Yahoo and Twitter, along with local newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, and also technology and journalism startup companies.

This weekend we held our first storytelling/hacking workshop to develop news applications for the iPad and tablet devices. More than 80 people worked in teams and built 12 apps in less than 36 hours. At the end of the event, the teams have presented their work to a panel of judges that includes a venture capitalist, technology entrepreneur and journalists. The winning projects were a children’s news application and a site with news stories about your political representatives based on your location.

I am also turning words into actions and launching my own company relating to journalism and technology, where I am co-founder of a startup together with Xavier Damman, a Belgian developer now living San Francisco. We are working to develop journalism applications and our first product is Publitweet, which takes Twitter and makes it more easily readable for non-Twitter users. The application is already in use on top French-language sites including Le Monde and Liberation, and also Le Soir in Belgium, along with other news sites in the U.S.

We are working on our next generation application that will make it easy for journalists, bloggers and anyone to create stories using content from the social Web. We want to empower journalists so they can concentrate on what they do best, and give them great technology tools and a way to earn a living.

Hacks and Hackers, this week-end

Would you tell us a funny story or an anecdote illustrating the spirit of H/H?

It turned out I wasn’t the first to think of this name. Two leaders in the journalism technology community — Aron Pilhofer of The New York Times and Rich Gordon from Northwestern University’s Medill school of journalism — had also proposed this name for an online community. The coincidence was pointed out by other journalists on Twitter, so we eventually got in touch and decided to join efforts.

The great thing about this community is that everyone wants to help each other. We’ve launched a question-and-answer site at for media technology issues that has been growing quickly. People realize that we can gain much more by working together and learning from each other.

How do you finance H/H?

I’ve been paying for it myself so far, asking for donations at events and finding some sponsors. We’re working now to turn Hacks/Hackers into a non-profit organization, and are looking for sponsors and foundations to support our initiatives to build the future of journalism.

Initiatives like yours are quite rare in Europe where journalism world often looks to be in an ivory tower. Do you think this initiative it’s ‘exportable’ to Europe too?

Yes! We’ve already had interest from people in Europe who have signed up for the group. We would be delighted to expand there and cooperate with local journalists to produce events. I worked around the world as a bureau chief and correspondent for The Associated Press for 12 years, and would be happy to help bring together journalists and technologists everywhere. Journalism and open information are essential for society to function, keeping governments and companies accountable to their citizens.

This interview is also avalaible in french here

Photos CC Flickr by cstmweb

Owni entame aujourd’hui un cycle de traduction des articles que vous avez préférés sur la soucoupe. Ce n’est que la première de nombreuses surprises à venir.

Nous commençons par un article de Benoit Raphaël, rédacteur en chef du Post (UPDATE).

Bienvenue à bord aux nouveaux venus !

Today Owni starts a new cycle : we will translate some of the articles that you liked the most. It is only the first surprise of a lot more to come. We start here with the translation of an article written by Benoît Raphaël, editor in chief at Le Post.

Welcome aboard to foreign friends !

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Turbulent times can become very productive to create new ideas. In my spare time, I had the chance to think about the concept of a blended newsroom combining harmoniously web and print dimensions. Since I found this issue fascinating , I decided to share it with you and start a conversation.

It has long been talking about models of integrated newsrooms (the best known is the one Ifra suggested). Another one is Daily Telegraph’s integrated newsroom. Quite scary at first glance, hum?

But very often theoretical models clash with day-by-day reality of newsrooms that include today a large majority of print-oriented journalists with small web experience. If you ask them to write both for print and web, you’ll get them torn between two media. This produces two blocks:

1) The web is not a pipe in which you can put any type of content. Print articles are very often unsuitable for web and mobile use. Just think that at LeMonde.fr, print articles represent 30% of production, but less than 15% of traffic. You can not just write and redirect to a pipe. To produce a content you have to take an evolving environment into account

People make the same mistake today with mobile phones, when they pretend to replicate there the same content that has been conceived for desktop devices.

2) Journalists become schizophrenic. They become “bi-media” and feel they are bi-working, which for them means “twice”… As a consequence, they keep producing with a print-oriented vision.

Thus, we have to forget that old idea of merging newsrooms. And make a choice: go where the information breathes, where readers/users are connected and involved. Create one newsroom “where everything happens,” that is to say on the web. This is the heart of information system. The rest is just appearance.

Why the web ? Because the Google era has changed everything. And generated the emergence (and necessity) of the so-called networked journalism. A journalism that is not just content production but becomes an on-going process that is based on the strength of the network (information fragmentation, new rhythms, social media, user generated content…) to produce and distribute information.

You will then get neither one “bi-media” newsroom or two, but three that I would divide into 2 subgroups:

One Creation-oriented journalism (the Google Newsroom)
One Curation-oriented Journalism (community management and copy desk)

Note that I do not use the word “journalist” but “journalism”. Journalism taken not as a profession but as a (precious) function – where sharing journalistic skills with amateurs is considered as a strength.

Take the example of a newspaper. Let’s call it “The Hope” :

- 100.000 copies / day
- 1 €
- 36 pages.
- Print newsroom: 85 journalists + 7 copy editors.
- Web newsroom: 7 journalists + 1 community manager.
That means 100 journalists.
A beautiful newsroom. But there is not a single market where they are leader. Not enough people on the web, too few on the paper.

Now imagine a new version. Always with our 100 journalists. But in this case the newsroom will be so focused on the “digital” dimension that it will be number one on the web and mobile information.
At the same time, The Hope will publish a newspaper of highest quality which will enable it to increase sales – and perhaps the price. Incidentally, it will earn more money.

1 – One Creation-oriented journalism: the Google Newsroom

Composed of 80 of your journalists, but also integrating other journalistic productions (via link journalism), blogging and user generated content managed by the media.

Your 80 journalists are gathered into 10 business units, ie in thematic clusters. Just as an independent media (which could be branded in another way) managed (or not) by a cluster manager, around which you can gather 8 journalists, bloggers, a community + 1 marketing + 1 sales officer (they can work on multiple clusters).
Each cluster can also have its copy editor and its associated community manager.
(One can also imagine 3 large clusters of 16 journalists and 3 clusters of 10 journalists etc.).

In each cluster, we will produce creation-oriented journalism. The driving question must be: since everyone covers approximately the same information on the network, what is my added value?

You will thus find:

- Reporters (Journalists + bloggers): they don’t “cover” news, they don’t replicate press agencies wires, they bring original stories.

They go on the real or virtual ground. They publish with a large array of rhythms: live tweeting, articles, videos, data, in-depth investigation… They can also manage a community of bloggers / users with whom they can co-produce the news.

- Curators (journalists + amateurs) : they “cover” the news by sorting, verifying and editing live everything good existing on the web and in the media. They make link journalism, they make the news more accessible.

- Columnists (bloggers, journalists, experts): they start conversations and give stories another perspective.

2 – A Curation-oriented journalism:

- A team of 10 super-copy-editors, in charge of curating the news in 36 pages. They work only on 3 or 4 pages each, but they have a real old-school copy-editing job. They retrieve the content published by the Google Newsroom and make it live in a different way. They are in charge of making the news more readable and more visual. They do with the paper everything that the web can not do.
A fine example of what the paper is capable is the Portuguese newspaper “I”.

With the support of copy-editors, each “digital” business unit may decide to produce printed special issues.

- A team of 10 community journalists and database-journalists, in charge of curating the information on the web and mobile. In fact, they are primarily responsible for user experience with the news. They take care of the quality of users’ engagement.

They also work on curating the information in the form of databases (like the New York Times).

They also organize the content in topics pages assembling in one web page all that you should know about a topic (posts, links, tweets, cold data, etc.). The Huffington Post do it very well with their Big News Pages.

The result of all this is a networked, powerful, completely reorganized newsroom : The Google Newsroom.
With 80 Google Journalists, this would be France’s first online newsroom.

Imagine the same thing with the 200 journalists that work today in big national daily newspapers.

You will tell me: will your 80 journalists be able to go on the web ? In most newsrooms, the “web level” is close to zero.
I think so. What is blocking is rather bi-media, schizophrenia. Now, if the message and the environment is clear, if he/she is properly trained, a good journalist will do good journalism.

The most reluctant will have the chance of having fun with a creative form of copy-editing.

It is a model that can easily be duplicated to television and radio.

What do you think about all this ?

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» The original article (in french) and a reaction by Mikiane from France24 (in french too)

» Translation by Adriano Farano (and a litte bit by Guillaume Ledit) /-)

» Homepage illustration by mediamolecule sur Flickr